Fable is still facing one huge nightmare in 2025

We’re 15 years on from the last main Fable game and I still haven’t stopped thinking about it. Xbox’s flagship fantasy series has been on a lengthy hiatus since then (besides a few spin-offs), but I’m glad Playground Games’ reboot is finally coming next year.

It’s great to be a Fable fan if you play on Xbox. The original three games from the Xbox 360 are fully backwards compatible on Xbox One and Series X/S, and they boast additional features like fps boosts and 4K enhancements. If you’re on PC though, it’s a pretty big nightmare if you just want to play some Fable in 2025.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about replaying the games in time for the reboot next year. And with my Xbox currently in storage, I decided to see how well this could go if I tried playing them on PC instead. But, alas, Microsoft has made that quite difficult for me.

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The main problem is that your only real option for playing Fable on PC right now is going with the original game or its remaster, because trying to play the sequels can’t be done easily or legally.

The original Fable came to PC with the release of The Lost Chapters expansion in 2005, about a year after the original was released on Xbox. It then received a remaster, Fable Anniversary, in 2014. Luckily, both versions of the game are on Steam and have been in my library for years, so I had an easy way to access them without resorting to eBay.

And for all its worth, the original release of Fable: The Lost Chapters was a pretty good port for its time. As is usually the case with PC ports of console games, it boasted higher resolutions and graphical enhancements, as well as modding potential and additional features.

But I’ve tried to get Fable: The Lost Chapters running on my modern PC for a while now, and it simply won’t run well. After installing it, I had to fiddle around with the game files just to get it to boot to the menu, and even when I could play, it would frequently crash.

It doesn’t have controller support either, and even using Steam Input, it seemed to glitch out a lot of my controller presets. After a few hours, I gave up and tried Fable Anniversary instead.

Fable Anniversary runs better on my PC. It doesn’t crash as often, nor does it have as many glitches. And for the most part, the remaster team did a good job of translating the original game onto a contemporary platform.

This version of the game is fine, and the best option if you’re playing on PC right now, but I can’t help but feel the new graphical upgrades interfere with the art style. The colours seem off, and there’s a weird blurring effect I can’t seem to reduce in the settings. My feelings on it are similar to Microsoft's remaster of Halo: Combat Evolved. The vibes just feel off.

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This leads me onto the sequels, Fable 2 and Fable 3. Great games that I played on Xbox 360 back in the day, and wholly inaccessible on PC unless you want to fork out an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription and play via cloud streaming.

Fable 2 was an exclusive to the Xbox 360. Which is a huge shame, as it’s actually my favourite of the three. I loved all the interactions you could have with the dog, and the rags-to-riches storyline was really interesting to me. I grew up on a lot of ‘90s British telly, so it also featuring the voices of Stephen Fry and Zoë Wanamaker was a huge plus.

It isn’t much better with Fable 3, either. Technically, it did have a PC release. It came out about half a year following the Xbox 360 version. But it was delisted in 2013, barely two years after its release.

The problem with Fable 3’s PC version is it ran on Game For Windows Live, which was a service Microsoft ran that let you connect your PC games to the Xbox Live network. This was just before Steam established itself as the standard platform in PC gaming, and other publishers were still trying to get their own launchers off the ground.

I actually own a copy of Fable 3 in my Steam library. Of course, the GFWL requirement was never patched out, and the service was discontinued in 2014. So you need to do some messing around in the files to get it to bypass the DRM. Sometimes it doesn’t work, either.

Anyway, an hour of tinkering and downloading some extra files from a dodgy website, and I’m finally in. Fable 3 launches and I can play the game. It’s a bit iffy though. I’m getting frame drops and the audio is kinda bungled.

Lionhead Studios

This led to me trying out the streaming option on PC Game Pass. For those who are unaware, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has this neat feature where you can stream games from Microsoft’s data centres to your device—be it an Xbox, PC, phone, or tablet. And this is the main way for PC gamers to access the Fable sequels.

Obviously, you’ll need a constant and smooth internet connection to play. It works for me when it works, and it doesn’t work for me when it doesn’t. And unfortunately, there are more times I’m experiencing the latter than the former. I play a little on my Steam Deck, and the connection is just far too choppy to enjoy consistently.

It’s the same deal on my phone and my desktop PC; I manage to play just enough to become immersed in the game, and then the framerate tanks as my connection gets a little sketchy. It’s frustrating, inconsistent, and simply doesn’t replace good ol' fashioned downloads for me. I’m constantly hurrying through every section of the game, because I want to hit a checkpoint quickly in case my connection drops. That's not the right way to enjoy Fable.

I’m probably just better off playing the Xbox versions of these games. So into the loft I go, and fish out a Series X I haven't touched since moving house, along with my old Fable 2 and Fable 3 boxed copies.

Not only do these games run right out of the box, but they’re also backwards compatible with the latest Xbox hardware. I’ve got my old Fable 3 physical copy from 2010 stored away somewhere, and it runs just like new on my Series X.

But I’m a PC gamer at heart, and I feel like there needs to be a better way to play these games on a Windows PC. Xbox is committed to strengthening the relationship between Xbox and PC gaming, as evident by the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally. But these games are impossible to play smoothly if you don’t have a good enough internet connection to stream them via Game Pass Cloud.

I know I’m beating the same old drum when I say I wish these games would get modern remasters for PC. With Microsoft releasing the new Fable reboot from Playground Games next year, it seems like the right time to get people interested in the series again.

And for me, someone who hasn’t stopped thinking about Fable in the last 20 years, I’d just like to play these games legally without having to jump through a million hoops. Until we get that, the Fable series is still facing one huge nightmare.